Order From:

The Sourcebook ProjectP.O. Box 107
Glen Arm, MD 21057USA

Tel: +1 (410) 668 6047.

Ordering information

Prices are in U.S. dollars. Canadian dollars and pounds sterling
are accepted at prevailing exchange rates. U.S. customers should
add $2 for each order under $30. Foreign customers should
add $12.00 per book for airmail mail.

Preface from the Book

U.S. customers should add $2 for each order under $30. Foreign customers should add $12.00 per book for airmail mail.

Contents

Preface

List of Project Publications

Chapter 1. ARCHEOLOGY

Ancient Engineering Works

Small Artifacts

Epigraphy and Art

Diffusion and Culture

Chapter 2. ASTRONOMY

Planets and Moons

Solar System Debris

Stars

Cosmology

Chapter 3. BIOLOGY

Humans

Other Mammals

Birds

Reptiles

Amphibians

Fish

Arthropods

Invertebrates

Plants and Fungi

Microorganisms

Superorganisms

Genetics

Origin of Life

Evolution

Chapter 4. GEOLOGY

Topography

Stratigraphy

Inner Earth

Geological Miscellany

Chapter 5. GEOPHYSICS

Luminous Phenomena

Weather Phenomena

Hydrological Phenomena

Exotic Seismic Signals

Anomalous Sounds

Atmospheric Optics

Chapter 6. PSYCHOLOGY

Dissociation Phenomena

Hallucinations

Mind-Body Phenomena

Hidden Knowledge

Information Processing

Psychokinesis

Chapter 7. CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS
MATH, ESOTERICA

Chemistry

Physics

Mathematics

Esoterica

The primary intent of this book is entertainment. Do not look for profundities! All I claim here is an edited
collection of naturally occurring anomalies and curiosities that I have winnowed mainly from scientific journals
and magazines published between 1976 and 1993. With this eclectic sampling I hope to demonstrate that nature is
amusing, beguiling, sometimes bizarre, and, most important, liberating. "Liberating?" Yes! If there is anything
profound between these covers, it is the influence of anomalies on the stability of stifling scientific paradigms.

First, though, some statistics about my overall endeavor. This present collection consists of about 1500 items
of science news and research originally published in the first 86 issues of Science Frontiers, my bimonthly
newsletter. I have organized these items by scientific discipline (archeology, astronomy, etc.), updated them where
required, and hopefully woven them into a coherent whole. Some bumpiness and gaps are to be expected because I
selected only those tidbits that appealed to me. Complete coverage of all sciences was not a goal. Even so, I believe
that most readers will be impressed by the vast panorama of nature laid out here before them. From 40,000-year-old archeological digs in the New World (definitely verboten), to the pseudofish displayed by some mussels, to the
geological havoc wreaked by asteroid-raised tsumanis, the variety and richness of natural phenomena are to be seen
on every page -- and so are the scientific puzzles they pose.

I confess that my newsletter, Science Frontiers, is only as teaser to tempt its readers to partake in a much
larger, more comprehensive banquet: the Catalog of Anomalies. This work, now comprising 13 volumes of a
projected 30, represents my entire file of some 40,000 items gleaned from a survey of about 14,000 volumes of
science journals and magazines from 1820 to date. This massive hoard of scientific engimas, paradoxes, and
esoterica was assembled bit by bit from 363 volumes of Nature, 260 volumes of Science, 100 volumes of the
Journal of Geophysical Research, and so on with other journals. I believe my collection is unique. It transcends
modern computerized data bases in its very wide time frame and its focus on the anomalous and curious. The
present book is recent sampling of the kind of material that goes into the Catalog of Anomalies.

The Catalog of Anomalies represents my personal attempt to assemble the riddles of science and, given a
large array of them, to discern some meaning implicit in the melange. On the practical level, which as a self-employed researcher I cannot avoid, my priorities have had to be as follows: Goal #1 has been the satisfaction of
my own curiosity; Goal #2 has been the marketing of enough books to support my research, for no government
offices or private foundations seem at all interested in supporting this new discipline of "anomalistics"; Goal #3 has
been more altruistic: the anticipation that there may be something scientifically useful in all this. But, even if there
is not, the quest has been fulfilling in itself.

Some mainstream scientists may recoil at the thought of 40,000 anomalies and curiosities. Surely nature
cannot be that enigmatic and cryptic! Actually, I must stress that my search is stil far from complete. Anomalies -- those observations that do not yield to mainstream explanations -- are ubiquitous and proliferate. I have trawled
through only a small fraction of the English-language scientific journals; thousands of volumes of specialized, less-known, publications gather dust untouched. Among them are unexamined books, monographs, informal papers,
and popular publications. Foreign-language sources have only been sampled, and I can attest that the fishing there
is good, too. And in today's electronic milieu, anomalies travel from computer screen to computer screen, by E-mail, and by fax. What an immense untapped resource! Yes, I am certain that nature is even more anomalous than
the following pages intimate.

I admit freely that this book and the Catalog of Anomalies harbor a scattering of fraudulent and questionable
data. I try to weed these out; but no data base can be completely clean. On the other hand, I do not apologize for
retaining phenomena upon which mainstream science has "closed the book." Didn't science do this to the idea of
continental drift until the 1960s, only to canonize the the concept in the 1970s? Now, one believer has
recommended that data contradicting plate tectonics no longer be published? (Be assured that the pages of Science
Frontiers will always welcome such waifs. Scientific political correctness is anathema here.

Mainstream science's response to my collections has been remarkably favorable despite my obvious
iconoclastic tendencies. For example, Nature has reviewed five of my books without recommending their
immediate incineration; other science journals have been likewise generous. The most annoying comment in the
scores of reviews in my file has been that science should not waste time with esoterica! This reviewer apparently
forgot about that tiny, esoteric advance of Mercury's perihelion that resisted explanation until Einstein came along.
Also troubling have been warnings by more than one reviewer that undergraduates should not be exposed to my
books lest the image of science be tarnished.

I began this Preface by warning against expecting anything profound to emerge from the simple process of
collecting anomalies and curiosities. Data collection is, after all, only one part of the scientific process. I have
avoided as far as possible the "fun" part of science: theorization. My purpose has been to keep the data base as
valuefree as possible. It is this value-free aspect of the Catalog of Anomalies plus the eclectic nature of my search
that makes my endeavor not only entertaining but liberating. I will now explain what I mean by "liberating," and
why this feature of anomalistics might be scientifically useful.

Unless you have been comatose the past several years, you must know that the entire outlook of science is in
flux. The words "chaos" and "complexity" are the current buzz words. They betoken, finally, the formal
recognition by science that nature is frequently:

Unpredictable (as in weather forecasting beyond a few days)

Complex (as in any life form)

Nonlinear (as in just about all real natural phenomena)

Discontinuous (as in saltations in the fossil record)

Out-of-equilibrium (as in real economics)

Eroding fast are the philosophical foundation stones of the clockwork universe: the idea that nature is in balance, that geological processes are uniformitarian, that life evolved in small, random steps, and that the cosmos is
deterministic.

My view is that anomaly research, while not science per se, has the potential to destabilize paradigms and
accelerate scientific change. Anomalies reveal nature as it really is: complex, chaotic, possibly even unplumbable.
Anomalies also encourage the framing of rogue paradigms, such as morphic re-sonance and the steady-state
universe. Anomaly research also transcends current scientific currency by celebrating bizarre and incongruous
facets of nature, such as coincidence and seriality. However iconoclastic the pages of this book, the history of
science tells us that future students of nature will laugh at our conservatism and lack of vision.

Such heavy philosophical fare, however, is not the main diet of the anomalist. The search itself is everything.
My greatest thrill, prolonged as it was, was in my forays through the long files of Nature, Science. the English
Mechanic, the Monthly Weather Review, the Geological Magazine, and like journals. There, anomalies and
curiosities lurked in many an issue, hidden under layers of library dust. These tedious searches were hard on the
eyes, but they opened them to a universe not taught by my college professors!

And the end is not in sight. To wax Whitmanesque, when presently recognized anomalies are duly interred
under an overburden of theory, more will arise. And this, dear reader, is as philosophical as I can afford to get.

"A sourcebook of unexplained phenomena is therefore a valuable addition to a collection of scientific literature. William R. Corliss has provided this in the past with his source books of scientific anomalies in several subjects, and now he has provided it for astronomy. He has done an excellent job of collecting and editing a large amount of material, taken in part from scientific journals and in part from scientific reporting in the popular or semi-scientific press." -- "The Mysterious Universe: A Handbook of Astronomical Anomalies", reviwed by Thomas Gold, Cornell University, in Icarus, vol.41, 1980

"An interesting, systematic presentation of unusual weather [..] This book is recommended for a general audience" --"Corliss, William R., Tornados, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipitation, and Related Weather Phenomena, Sourcebook Project, 1983.", revieweed in Choice, September 1983

"Before opening the book, I set certain standards that a volume which treads into dangerous grounds grounds like this must meet. The author scrupulously met, or even exceeded those standards. Each phenomenon is exhaustively documented, with references to scientific journals [..] and extensive quotations" -- "Book Review: The moon and planets: a catalog of astronomical anomalies", The Sourcebook Project, 1985., Corliss, W. R., Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 81, no. 1 (1987), p. 24., 02/1987